Norman O'Neill (composer)

Norman Houston O’Neill (14 March 1875 – 3 March 1934) was an English composer and conductor of Irish background who specialised largely in works for the theatre. Life O’Neill was born at 16 Young Street in Kensington, London, the youngest son of the Irish painter George Bernard O’Neill and Emma Stuart Callcott, the daughter of organist and glee composer William Hutchins Callcott. He studied in London with Arthur Somervell and with Iwan Knorr at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt from 1893 to 1897. His studies there were facilitated by Eric Stenbock. He belonged to the Frankfurt Group, a circle of composers who studied at Hoch’s Conservatory in the late 1890s. He married Adine Berthe Maria Ruckert (29 July 1875 – 17 February 1947) on 2 July 1899 in Paris. Adine was a celebrated pianist (a pupil of Clara Schumann) and music teacher in her own right – she later became head music mistress at St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith. O’Neill began to have some success with concert music, including a 1901 performance of his overture In Autumn given at the Henry Wood Proms. In 1904 he composed the incidental music to John Martin-Harvey’s production of Hamlet at the Lyric Theatre, London. In